


Little Lady

by charleybradburies



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Birthday, Birthday Party, Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Chance Meetings, Community: 1_million_words, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Diners, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Feels, First Kiss, First Meetings, Grief/Mourning, Hitchhiking, Hurt/Comfort, Ice Cream, Imagine your OTP, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mentions of Taylor Swift, Missing Persons, No Sex, No Underage Sex, POV Gendry, Past Character Death, Phone Calls & Telephones, Secret Identity, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-20
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-02-21 21:43:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2483468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He throws open the passenger side door of his truck, and a pair of caustic grey eyes lurch up at him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A/N 5.22.15:   
> I've joined the LJ community '1_million_words', and since I'm counting all that I write during 2015 towards my word count total, I've tagged this as such and put it in the collection of my works from 2015, but that doesn't apply to what of this was written in 2014 (chapters 1+2). I don't know if that matters to anyone but I'm just letting you know.

NOVEMBER 2014

It’s dusk when he leaves the garage, and nightfall by the time he’s on the highway heading home. As he’s getting over into the right hand lane to turn off, though, his headlights catch a small figure by the exit, a girl by the looks of it, sitting on a duffel bag with her head in her hands. He veers his truck over to the edge of the road and stops. He throws open the passenger side door of his truck, and a pair of caustic grey eyes lurch up at him.

“Need some help, little lady?”

She growls.

“I’m not a lady. Shut up.”

He purses his lips and sits back in his seat a bit farther.

“My apologies. However, you do look like you could at least use a lift, if not a nice dinner.” 

“I’m seventeen; you’re not allowed to hit on me.”

“Not hitting on you.”

“Then what the hell are you doing?”

“Just trying to help.” 

“Well, I’m just trying to get to my brother’s place,” she huffs, wrapping her arms around her knees, and he sees that she’s shivering. He reaches in the backseat, grabbing a blanket, and tosses it out at her. She looks at it awkwardly, still unsure, then tentatively wraps it around herself. 

“Where’s your brother’s place?” he asks, trying to make his voice even more gentle.

“Castle Black,” she says, her voice barely a murmur, and tears form behind her eyelids. She hastily pushes them away. “I think. I don’t really know. I don’t know where he is, I don’t know where anyone is. I’ve never been to-” 

She stops, about to cry, and buries her face into her knees. After a moment she starts shaking, though whether from crying or the cold, he can’t be sure.

“Hey!” he says, almost a shout, and she raises her head again to find his hand stretched out towards her. “It’s cold, and dark, and some creep is gonna come pick you up if I don’t, so can you please just-”

“ARE WE OUTTA THE WOODS YET ARE WE OUTTA THE WOODS YET ARE WE OUTTA THE WOODS YET ARE WE OUTTA THE WOODS,” comes the crooning from his mobile, and he groans before picking it up.

“Yes, Mya?” 

“Where the hell are you? The Deadly Women marathon started like, ten minutes ago.”

“Slight detour.”

“Does this detour involve ice cream?”

He groans again.

“Why would my detour involve ice cream?”

“I don’t know, I just want ice cream.”

“You know what, maybe I’ll get you ice cream if you stop whining at me about every damn thing. I’m your brother, not your boyfriend, you can move out any time and stop watching my goddamned cable.”

“Oh, I finished your peanut butter too. You should get some more of that while you’re out.”

He takes a deep breath, and as he pauses he sees that the girl is laughing at him. 

“You like that shitty bubblegum ice cream, right?”

“I love you, little brother,” coos Mya, and the girl laughs again.

“Shut up,” he says, and hangs up his phone. 

“Now, where were we? Right.” 

He extends his hand over the passenger seat again, and this time she slips one of her hands into his and stands up. 

“Arya,” she announces softly. “Arya Stark.”

It hits him all of a sudden, who she is. The riches-to-rags heiress who’d lost almost her entire family in a series of tragic events that spanned the past few months: the deaths of her father and his closest friend whilst on a hunting trip, the deaths of her mother, brother, sister-in-law and unborn nephew in a car crash, and the mysterious disappearance of her two youngest brothers after their majestic estate burned near to the ground. Only the two girls, Sansa and Arya, and their half-brother Jon, remained. 

“Gendry Waters,” he answers as she chucks her duffel bag into the backseat. She grabs his hand again, for help climbing into the truck, and he almost laughs at just how small she is. Almost.

“Well, as you know, I have an errand to run for my lovely sister. A couple exits up, there’s a diner and a grocery, so we can go there, then I’ll take you back. You can take the couch, or I’ll take the couch, or whatever, and I’ll get you to the train station tomorrow so you can get up to your brother, okay?” 

“You don’t really have to do all that.”

“I don’t mind,” he shrugs, and she seems to consider that for a moment.

“Okay, then. Sounds like a plan, I guess.”

He lets her sit in her answer for a moment, and when she takes a deep breath and adjusts the blanket tighter around herself, he merges back into the sparse traffic. She’s falling asleep by the time they reach the diner, and he hates to wake her up, but he does anyway.

Their waitress, one of Mya’s friends, gives him an odd look when she comes over to the table, which he waves off, grateful that Arya doesn’t seem to have noticed it. She pays little attention to him at all, really, and he’s perfectly fine with that, since he’s not much of a talker in the first place. She doesn’t say a single thing, except her order and a mumbled ‘thank you’ to their waitress, until they’re back in the car. He sets the grocery bag on the floor behind him and lets out a slight sigh, and she giggles a moment later, so he looks over at her in muted confusion.

“For the record, bubblegum ice cream is fucking fantastic,” she says authoritatively, and Gendry throws his head back and laughs. When his energy settles, she’s curled up on the seat with a satisfied smirk across her face. He decides against arguing, rolls his eyes instead, and pulls out of the parking spot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I'd think about continuing it. I never said it would be happy.

By the time Gendry pulls his truck into a parking spot outside his complex, Arya’s been fast asleep for at least twenty minutes. Her legs bend before the rest of her body and her head rests in the gap between the headrest and the back of the seat, and for all the tumult that had been in her eyes earlier - for all the tumult in her life - she looks legitimately serene.

Wondering if perhaps it had been the movement of the truck that had kept her so peaceful, he takes his phone out and fiddles around for a while, waiting to see if she’ll wake now that they’re stopped. Another twenty minutes pass with no change whatsoever.

He slips his arms under her, and she falls limp against his chest as he hoists her out of the passenger seat and carries her up to his flat. The television’s still on in the living room, and Mya’s passed out on the couch, a half-full glass of wine still on the coffee table. He rolls his eyes, and carries Arya down the hallway into his room, setting her onto his bed. Half-awake as he pulls the blanket from her hands, she sleepily grumbles at him as he takes off her jacket and shoes, and lays her down. He takes one of his biggest tee shirts out of a drawer and sets it on the floor beside the bed, and grabs a set of spare toiletries from the bathroom before carrying Mya back to her room and tucking her into bed. He runs back out to the truck to get the grocery bag and Arya’s duffel, leaving the latter in his room and putting the contents of the former into their proper places in the kitchen. He downs the rest of Mya’s wine and washes the glass, and collapses onto the couch. 

He doesn’t see Arya again until nearly eleven, when she waltzes out of the bathroom with his shirt on. It fits her, in the way that men’s clothes always seem to fit young women, especially when they traipse around with a sense of ownership about them. Her still-wet hair drapes down her back, leaving droplets of water hanging on the back of his shirt. 

Mya closes her laptop, concealing the Stark family wikipedia page, and glances over at her brother as he tries to form a coherent sentence.

“That coffee?” murmurs Arya before he gets a chance to speak, pointing at the mug cradled in his hand.

“Black, yeah, you want some?”

“Want is an understatement.”

He smiles, passing her his own cup as she sits down on one of the chairs at the kitchen counter. She brings it to her lips, tilts her head back, and downs it. He can’t help but laugh, even as Mya sends him a befuddled look. 

“Shut up,” says Arya, putting the mug back into his hands. Her fingertips graze his skin, there’s something of a spark, and he grits his teeth at himself.

“Shut up, both of you,” says Mya, and it’s Gendry’s turn to look at her with confusion. She switches the television to the news channel and raises the volume just in time to catch the end of the introduction.

“Our first story, and remember: you heard it here first, folks - the newest development in the Stark family case.”

Arya wheels herself around in her chair so quickly that she almost falls off.

“Jon Snow, the eldest living son of Eddard Stark, was reported missing this morning from his Castle Black apartment. According to investigators, very little was out of place, save for a ‘concerning amount of blood’ in the bathroom. Everything else seems to be in order.”

Arya stops breathing, tears in her eyes and hands in front of her stomach as though she were about to vomit. 

“This raises the question: is this simply a family haunted by tragedy, or is there foul play involved?”

The screen shifts to another reporter. 

“Five Starks dead, four missing, I’d certainly be wondering if there was motive.”

“Shut it off, Mya.”

Gendry’s voice comes out harsher than he’d expected, but he can’t force himself to care. 

A tear streaks Arya’s cheek, and though he’s not entirely sure that she’ll accept his embrace, he puts his hand on her shoulder anyway. One of her hands comes to grip it, with a fierceness that pains him, and he rounds the counter. He stands himself in front of her and opens his arms; her eyes meet his hesitantly, so he nods, and she practically dives into his chest as she presses herself against him. 

It’s only a moment before she starts to sob.


	3. Chapter 3

Arya falls apart in his arms for days. 

It’s all too much for her to take, and even though he’s never had much family, he has a strange sense of understanding.

She’s small and fragile and once she feels comfortable around him, he seldom lets go of her; even when he does, she’s loath to let him go, as though if he left her sight, he would die, too. It’s hard to explain to anyone, but the mutuality of that feeling is acute, and when Gendry returns to work on Monday he has to tell his boss that there’s a girl sitting in the bed of his truck and reading _Carrie._ Tobho shrugs, and reminds him that the beers in the fridge and condoms in the toolbox are off-limits. Gendry doesn’t bother telling him that the reminders are moot.

Arya Stark is still considering missing, and Arya Stark doesn’t want to be found, so she calls herself Cat when people ask her name, and it takes Gendry a couple of days to convince her to tell him why; it was a nickname of her mother’s. She wells up at the mention, and his hand comes to rest on her cheek. She leans a teeny bit closer, and he kisses her forehead, and she smiles her little appreciative smile. 

She doesn’t say much, not for a while. When she does speak, it’s mostly to make amusing comments, usually ones that might otherwise have seemed obnoxious, but she has a way of making everything sound a little bit nicer than reality would have you think it was. Gendry won’t deny that she’s quite pretty, but she’s that different sort of attractive, the sort someone is when people are just always inexplicably drawn to them, and perhaps it’s partly because she gives that back to the world. A grocery trip is extended when she sees a toddler straining for a snack far too high for them to reach and hoists the child up onto her shoulders to help; the child is with a single mother, and Cat goes around with her to entertain the child by letting them steer her around by hastily-made pigtails. They spend a Sunday afternoon at the neighborhood park, and have trouble keeping a steady game of frisbee going, since multiple dogs decide to drop their sticks and tennis balls at her tiny Converse-clad feet.

Practically everything about her is _tiny._ Sometimes he doesn’t notice - she’s loud enough and opinionated enough that it doesn’t really matter - but sometimes it’s plainly obvious just how small she is. One night, she falls asleep curled up against him on the couch, and when he looks down at her in the morning, she looks like a proper child, short and skinny with soft features and clear skin. It makes it even harder to see her cry, as though he’s wholly responsible for her and the fact that she hurts so much means he’s doing something wrong, like a first-time parent trying to get a newborn to stop crying by feeding them when actually their diaper needs to be changed. 

But unlike when he and Mya helped their friends Tom and Willow handle the stress they faced with a miniature human being at their charge, there really isn’t a guidebook for something like this. He knows firsthand that telling a prepubescent boy whose mother’s just died that things will get better makes absolutely nothing better, and that it’s a better idea to go to another convenience store than to buy a different brand of tampons, and that their upstairs neighbors have shower sex at least once a week, so if he plans to get a non-arctic shower on the day they end up doing it, he has to jump in the shower as soon as they’re audible, otherwise the hot water’s out for the night. (He also knows that they’ve been in the honeymoon stage of their relationship for two and a half years, and even very gently telling them that their lovemaking might hinder others results in them getting very defensive and implying that their relationship would be on the rocks were they to change their behavior and thus asking them to do so would be seen as heinous and absurd. He's learned to deal with it.) 

But a cute girl with a dirty mouth, a killer smile, a life filled with more tragedy than Shakespeare could have thought up, and quite possibly a criminal conspiracy over her head? There wasn’t any sort of guidebook that could help him know whether or not to get out of bed when you wake up in the middle of the night because you hear her crying, or what to do when she and your sister make a bet as to how many fries she can eat off your plate before you tell them that you’ve noticed, let alone how much of your reaction it’s appropriate to relay when she returns from a girls’ day out with a new - in Mya’s words, “more mature but still very punk rock” - wardrobe and her dark brown hair chopped into a bob, and she casually asks you how she looks - because when you think about it, she’s still years younger than you and you met her only a month ago and sure, she’s been living in your apartment, but it _really_ wouldn’t be polite to tell her that she looks very good and would look even better pressed up against a wall. 

Unfortunately, Gendry’s all too aware that she would; she’s unfazed by his presence, having grown up with so many brothers, and doesn’t seem to consider how he might be affected, if she realizes that he's affected at all. There’s a part of him that doesn’t mind, that just hopes he adjusts to having another girl around, and that soon it won’t be a big deal that she’s entirely comfortable sitting next to him on the couch, cotton shorts revealing the edges of her panties and the tee shirts she’s stolen from him doing absolutely nothing to conceal the diminutive breasts beneath them, but now, _dear God._

FEBRUARY 2015

There’s another part of him that could swear that, as comfortable as she is being around him, her breath hitches when he touches her without warning. She goes into the garage with him, and she sits and watches him work, and while she asks questions and makes jokes and hands him water bottles and tools, he’s pretty sure that: a) she cares demonstrably less about what he’s telling her than that they’re keeping each other company and b) the fact that he often works shirtless certainly doesn't hurt. 

Tobho’s wife Alyse dotes on her, excited to be slightly less outnumbered around her husband and his employees. Cat keeps the same birthday as she’s always had, the ninth of February, and Alyse insists on throwing her a party. She has Mya over to their house the Sunday before, and they drink white wine and labor on a large strawberry shortcake, which she brings down to the garage after hours that Monday, dressed nearly to the nines in a party dress so nice Mya jokes that she must have taken a wrong turn on the way to a film premiere. Tobho sets up a fire in the pit in their yard, and the few friends of Gendry's and Mya's that have met Cat come join them in sitting round it. 

Everyone’s language is careful that evening, as Mya had been adamant about avoiding the subject of Cat’s birth family, but Gendry still sees the pain, when she blows her candles out and opens her eyes, and he can see her reminding herself of the falsehoods of superstition, bracing herself to face the world, alone. 

Birthdays, holidays, achievements…they all made a point of enunciating grief. You could learn to deal with the everyday, with the knowledge that life goes on and you’re alive, but whenever the lull of daily life was punctuated, it all hit you again. The people who could be sitting in the crowd at your graduation, over-excitedly taking photographs at your wedding, reminding you that the Christmas tree wouldn’t make it to Christmas Day if you didn’t go water it…they leave spaces that can’t be filled. 

But sometimes, other people can come cozy up to the holes in your heart, and help make sure the oxygen keeps getting to your extremities, so that you can feel the warmth in the way their fingers curl around yours, and know that you really _aren’t_ alone.

At some point in the evening, Arya’d been leaning more fully against him, but now her head is nearly at the edge of his shoulder, so that she has enough leverage to look at him. His arm is still casually draped over her back, helping keep the blanket wrapped around her secure, and she fiddles with her hands, sometimes tapping his thigh and once cracking her knuckles, and eventually sneaking up to his chest as he begins to lean back against the side of the truck bed.

“Sometimes she used to sing to me. She worked in a bar a ways down the street our apartment was on, and if she heard a song she liked, we’d all go to the library. She’d sit me on her lap at the computer, and search up whatever lyrics she recalled. She’d print out the words, and she’d carry the papers around with her and hum the song until she had it memorized. She was worryingly skinny, and she had this blonde hair that wasn’t quite blonde - so yellow it looks gold, you know? It was curly, but Mya says that when I was really little I was so fascinated with it that it’d end up looking straight more often than not, since I pulled at it whenever she picked me up.”

As he finishes speaking, he catches her expression, her grey eyes alight with interest and a sweetly sad glimmer of a smile, as though she were remembering his mother, too, rather than imagining her. 

“She sounds wonderful,” Arya says sincerely, her voice still soft with tears, and Gendry nods, flattening his palm on the back of her shoulder and bringing her closer. Mya’s laugh radiates from the Motts' fire pit; the pair shares a momentary chuckle, but once that burst of energy settles, they spend the following few minutes in an easy silence. 

Gendry’s known Arya long enough enough to know that she’s a fidgeter, and it doesn’t bother him, but once she starts tapping out the rhythm of 'Blank Space' upon his ribcage, he calls an impromptu intervention. He’s quite comfortable leaving his left arm around her, so it’s his right hand that he presses against his chest, clasping her small hand underneath it.

“You know, if you’re bored, we can go back over to the fire pit. Or I’m sure everyone would understand if you felt like turning in a bit early tonight.”

“Not bored,” she says, pushing her fingers back, urging his to entwine themselves with them, and he rolls his eyes. 

“Lot of things you’re not,” he mutters, and she feigns an abrupt punch against his shoulder.

“You also never told me what you wanted, present-wise,” he adds.

“I didn’t want anything,” she defends.

“Nothing? I doubt that. There’s gotta be a book or a nice restaurant or a bar to go to, or something, at least.”

“There- I mean, there was one thing I thought of, but it, it’s stupid, so…” she mumbles tentatively, taking her arm away, nervously setting her hands in her lap.

“Well, if you wanted it, then it’s not stupid-”

“No, you know what? Just, forget I said that, okay?” Her voice is pleading, more fearful than it is apologetic, and he can feel her body grow tense next to him. She starts to scoot away, and looks back at him almost guiltily when he reaches for her wrist, stopping her from going farther than half a foot.

“Cat!” he exclaims worriedly, and his voice is quieter than he’d expected.

She reluctantly scoots back towards him, and he lets go of her just as reluctantly. The rubber padding squeaks as her leather pants rubs against it, and he can see her wince for a second or two and then roughly put the blanket beneath her.

“Like I said, it’s just, silly. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not as worried about _it_ as I am about _you._ You’re totally freaking out on me here, and something’s obviously not right to make you so uncomfortable."

He pauses.

_“I’m_ obviously not doing something right, for you to get this uncomfortable.”

She shakes her head so quickly it’s more reflexive than reactive.

“No, no, Gendry, you’re…wonderful. You’re… _too_ …wonderful.”

She’s emphatic, she’s blushing and trembling and his heart’s skipping beats, and he reaches out for her again. She hesitates, but slips her right hand back inside his left again. She turns her gaze vaguely downward, and since he’s close enough to touch her cheek, he does, and she obliges him an uncertain glance.

If he’d thought about it more, he probably would have stopped himself, but he’s wanted it, wanted _her,_ so badly that he’s started to forget how to deny it, and he leans over and kisses her. He can feel Arya’s entire body rise with a sharp intake of breath, and she pulls her hand free of his, but before he has time to assume she’s pulling away her arms are wrapped around his neck, tightly, as though she were afraid he’d surmise he didn’t really want to be kissing her. He returns her grip in part, setting one hand at the nape of her neck as the other snakes around her waist to urge her closer, and she scoots the couple inches over before swinging one of her legs over his and straddling him. Her grasp loosens, and her lips draw away breathlessly; his hands slink to her waist, small enough due to her size that he’s able to wrap his hands around her hips with ease.

“You’re right. That was a silly idea for a birthday present.” 

He can tell she’s not entirely sure what he means, but she chuckles at herself.

“I’ll be down for that any day of the year. Birthdays call for more specific requests.”

She laughs harder, and he laughs with her; he presses a short, gentle kiss to her lips and sits back again. She pushes some fallen hair behind her ears, lowering herself more fully into his lap.

“How do you feel about the Arctic Monkeys?”


End file.
